Deploy Drive File Stream

Deploy Drive File Stream to your organization for a quick and easy way to access your Drive files from your computer.

This article is for administrators. To learn how to use Drive File Stream, see the user Help Center.

How it works

With Drive File Stream, you stream your Drive files directly from the cloud to your Mac or PC, freeing up disk space and network bandwidth. Because Drive files are stored in the cloud, any changes you or your collaborators make are automatically updated everywhere. You’ll always have the latest version.

You can also make Drive files available for offline access. These cached files sync back to the cloud when you're online, so the latest version is available on all your devices.

Install or deploy Drive File Stream

Verify that Drive File Stream will work for your organization. You can use Drive File Stream on these operating systems:

Windows: Windows 7 and up. Windows Server editions are not supported.

Mac: El Capitan (10.11) and up. For High Sierra (10.13), follow these steps.

Delete the red comments and modify the email as appropriate for your organization.

SUBJECT: Google Drive just got easier for you and your team

We’re pleased to announce Drive File Stream, a new application for your Mac or PC. Use Drive File Stream to access all your Google Drive files from your computer while using less disk space and decreasing sync time.

How does it work?

With Drive File Stream, you can:

Quickly see all your Google Drive files in Finder/Explorer (including Team Drives).

Browse and organize Google Drive files without downloading all of them to your computer.

Choose which files or folders you'd like to make available offline.

Open files in common apps like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop.

How do I get started?

Visit the Drive Help Center to install Drive File Stream and get started.Delete “install Drive File Stream” if you’ll deploy this yourself.

Thanks,

- {Name}, Your G Suite administrator

Known issues

You can't currently duplicate Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

If you have edit access for a Team Drive (or any files shared within a Team Drive), you can currently only view these files in Drive File Stream. To edit the files, you must access them in Drive on the web.